History of horse doping questions sport's reputation

From Phar Lap to Black Caviar, horses have been heroes in Australian sport but a new book raises questions of just how clean the sport has been historically and how clean it is currently.

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SCOTT BEVAN, PRESENTER: From Carbine through Phar Lap to Black Caviar, horses have been hailed as heroes in the nation's sporting culture, but author Christopher Kremmer has been looking at Australia's history of horse doping while researching his latest book. His work casts many of racing's heroes in a new light and raises the question - how clean is racing today?

Greg Hoy reports.

CHRISTOPHER KREMMER, AUTHOR: Racing has operatic drama, it has Olympian athleticism, but it also has a dark side.

GREG HOY, REPORTER: With $14.5 billion gambled on who will win, plus $500 million in prize money at stake, in Australian racing today as throughout its long history - competition is as strong as the temptation to cheat.

BRIAN STEWART, RACING VIC: It's naive to imagine that drugs can't be used to influence performance. There are the stimulants which are perhaps the synthetic morphine drugs, the amphetamine type drugs which will slow down a horse, make him dull and off his game.

JOHN VINE, RACING ANALYTICAL SERVICES: We rely on intelligence from the stewards and from anyone else who will give us a whisper about what might be being used out there.

CHRISTOPHER KREMMER: Money is the root of all evil and you will put temptation in the way of an ordinary human being and they will step up to the plate quite often.

GREG HOY: Australian writer Christopher Kremmer is the son of a jockey, the now 80-year-old Ted Kremmer.

TED KREMMER: You beautiful horse, hello. Just getting out there in the morning and breathing fresh air that used to be here, don't if it's still here but it used to be here, fresh air in your lungs, it's good for you, you know.

CHRISTOPHER KREMMER: He loved the life, he loved horses but what really caught my attention was the stories of the underbelly of racing. The race fixing, the horse doping.

GREG HOY: His recent novel The Chase is based on the true and tragic tale of scientist Jean Kimball hired by the racing establishment Sydney Jockey Club in 1947 to pioneer the testing of horses for banned drugs.

CHRISTOPHER KREMMER: Everything was going swimmingly until she started getting positive swabs on horses owned by and trained by very well connected people. And then you got an almighty back lash.

GREG HOY: What Jean Kimball confirmed was a pervasive use of go slow or go fast drugs like cocaine, caffeine, morphine which can act as a stimulant, even heroin and amphetamines like Benzedrine.

CHRISTOPHER KREMMER: Disciplinary hearings that were set up to try trainers, and anyone else suspected of running doped horses ended up being a little bit of a star chamber for Jean Kimball herself and ultimately she was eased out.

GREG HOY: Here in Melbourne Museum, the preserved hide of that wonder horse Phar Lap remains one of the biggest drawcards, and what a horse. 37 wins from 51 starts, including 14 wins in a row before he died mysteriously in America. What's less known, however, is that adjacent to this perennially popular display is kept a small and insignificant-looking diary.

The diary of Phar Lap's trainer Harry Telford contains recipes for the special tonics he gave his horses, including cocaine, morphine and the poisons arsenic and strychnine.

BRIAN STEWART: Strychnine was a general sort of a stimulant tonic. Small doses, it probably has beneficial effects, but in large doses, obviously they're poisons.

CHRISTOPHER KREMMER: Harry Telford makes the notation, "This will help a horse who's not quite up to it."

TED KREMMER: Well I've seen him putting stuff on a bridle, you know, packing it round with sorta dough around a bridle. The trainer'd say, "Yeah, take him for a walk now before the race and the horse'd start doin' a war dance about 10 minutes before the race.

GREG HOY: More than once called before the tribunal when his horses tested positive was the legendary trainer Tommy "T.J." Smith. T.J., seen here in later years with his daughter and now-trainer Gai Waterhouse, was once suspended for five years, but got off on appeal when a young stable hand, Moree Ryan, was held responsible, having boasted he'd make money on the race. Ted Kremmer was called to give evidence.

TED KREMMER: And I told the AJC board and everything, I said, "Look, Moree does this every week. He wouldn't know how to dope a horse. He doesn't know anything about dopin' horses. That's the way he talks." But he got put out for flamin' 10 years or something.

CHRISTOPHER KREMMER: There was a pattern that was then established in these cases where the lowliest people on the food chain in racing were the ones who got drummed out.

GREG HOY: In Melbourne, Racing Victoria has a network of 100 staff who random blood test many horses before they race. Then, in quaint tradition, a selection of winning and losing horses are encouraged with the whistle to give a urine sample, which is taken for more detailed analysis in a sophisticated, off-course laboratory.

BRIAN STEWART: The actual positive detection rates, especially in Racing Victoria, is actually very low. You can look at that one way and say racing's doing a great job and everything's clean, or you could look at it another way and say, well, perhaps we're not detecting what is out there.

JOHN VINE: One of the things that is as true then as it is now is that when you get a drug positive that in fact in the subsequent inquiries, often the laboratory that's on trial rather than the trainer.

GREG HOY: In late October, the leading trainer Peter Moody of racing drawcard Black Caviar fame appeared before racing's disciplinary board after his winning gelding Lethal Arrow tested positive to the banned opiate, Oripavine, which can act as a stimulate.

Racing identity and Sydney radio announcer Alan Jones had suggested on air the gossip was there'd been five drug-related horse deaths in Victoria in as many months.

ALAN JONES, RADIO ANNOUNCER (2GB, Sept. 29): Something odd is going on in Victorian racing, and trainers in Victoria are onto something which is putting the health of horses at risk while hoping to induce improved performance.

ALAN JONES (2GB, Sept. 29): The trainer in Melbourne with freakish results Peter Moody has been charged with a positive urine sample.

GREG HOY: Though he pleaded guilty in October to presenting a horse with a prohibited substance, trainer Peter Moody was not penalised after arguing his horse had inadvertently been fed feed containing wild poppy seeds of the opium variety. The board found in Moody's favour.

BRIAN STEWART: A very thorough investigation was undertaken.

GREG HOY: Similarly when one of her horses tested positive to cocaine in NSW in 2005, leading trainer Gai Waterhouse was charged and fined, but successfully argued cocaine use was common socially, one of her stable hands giving evidence he'd used cocaine on two previous occasions so may have somehow contaminated the horse.

STABLEHAND (July 29, 2005): I wish to apologise to Ms Waterhouse and that I will never take drugs again.

GREG HOY: Gai Waterhouse's $15,000 fine was quashed, though her conviction for presenting a horse with a prohibited substance stood. Then three years later, Gai Waterhouse was fined $10,000 when another of her horses tested positive to a banned anabolic steroid. Ms Waterhouse protested she had no idea how it could have been given to the horse and was not charged with administering the drug.

BRIAN STEWART: I can only say it's a different jurisdiction. I think there does have to be some disincentive to trainers being careless about their environment.

GREG HOY: Racing today is adamant it's doing everything in its power to safeguard its integrity, but given its long track record, there will always be sceptics.

CHRISTOPHER KREMMER: It still goes on today. Even the people, the scientists who are involved in drug testing will tell you - one thing they always say is, you know, "We're always one step behind the horse dopers."

BRIAN STEWART: Stories about drugs in racing are often pretty much exaggerated.

GREG HOY: Many might hear you say that and ask why then would you have 100 people working on the problem?

BRIAN STEWART: Because it's a huge potential problem, and we think we provide an effective deterrent. And you only need a very small minority to cheat to completely ruin the industry for everybody.